


The Moment Before the Gunshot

by havisham



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Bad Decisions, Banter, Dead Robins, Loss, M/M, The Case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-28
Updated: 2011-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:05:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's always the moment before the gunshot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moment Before the Gunshot

**I. When you breath in you’ll lift up like a balloon and your heart is too light & too huge**

**  
**

When he’s up there, above the city that curls back into itself and stretches and smolders and sparks and fumes, when he’s up _there_ , looking out into that city, he can’t help but whisper an impressed little _wow_.

Batman hears (bats have the sharpest hearing, that’s the first thing he learns) but he doesn’t stir, not a muscle moves. But his voice is warm when he says, “Let’s go.”

Robin follows without thinking, as they launch themselves off the edge.

_Oh wow. Oh wow wow wow._

It’s true that this Robin is different. He doesn’t have former’s finesse, his acrobatic skills. This Robin hangs on for dear life, he hasn’t quite learned the ropes yet. But then again, he wasn’t raised in a circus, but rather in a concrete zoo, at the mercy of a city that eats its own young. But he is tough and he is clever. A survivor. What’s more, he never let the city swallow him whole.

Remarkable, for someone still so young.

But — _still_ , he’s always been earthbound before — or at least asphalt-bound and concrete-bound, because this is Gotham after all, and the concept of earth, of soft soil is as alien to this hard city streets as boys taking wing. But yes, that’s what Gotham is made of, and he, well, he is made in, of, from Gotham.

_Hey, hey, cut it out. No more “Gotham is...” metaphors. Leave those for the big guy._

And they’re on another rooftop, then another. He catches his own breath enough to say, “This is how you make gravity your bitch, huh, Batman?” And Batman does not correct his language, not this time. Though Robin is _sure_ he’s dying to do so. Instead he gives Robin a grin that’s all teeth, and says, “You haven’t seen anything yet, chum.”

Robin’s stomach drops somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. And they’re off again. The darkness is like silk on his face, and his mouth aches from grinning too much. Then a stray thought leeches in through his euphoria and brings him up short.

_But what if I fall?_

But.

 _Robins_ don’t fall, not after they’ve earned their wings, no way! Anyway, his heart is too light and too full. It’s beating with pure joy. He’s flying and he’s falling all at once ( _but still safe_ ) and he could do it forever.

There’s no way he could fall down back to earth.

 

 

**II. Your heart is a shaken fist**

**  
**

Bruce says his name, _Jason_ , like there’s a hundred pounds of dead weight attached to it. Guilt is the heaviest emotion. Bruce should know.

But Jason doesn’t want Bruce’s _guilt_ , Bruce’s _grief_ , or Bruce’s _love_. He doesn’t want any of it, he won’t accept any of it.

Of course, Jason has a history of lying to himself, but that’s all right, it really is. Because everyone else has a history of lying about him, too, he is about to find out. He has found out. In any case, he’s in good company there. He’s in the best company there. The world’s finest.

“Choose.” he hisses, and the Joker writhes with pleasure against him, his arm tight against the Clown Prince’s chest. At least someone is enjoying this whole fucked-up situation...-

He’s repeating himself, unable to keep a note of pleading out of his voice (please, please choose me this time) although Bruce has made his choice years ago and tonight’s just a rehash of events long past.

“Please.”

He doesn’t say that. But his plea lingers on. _Please._

But Bruce can’t, and would never and Jason won’t and could never... And so the Joker lives to see another day.

It isn’t fair. But then again, nothing ever is. He didn’t have to die and rise again to know that.

 

He died knowing it.

 

 

**III. It's always the moment before the gunshot / And you try & rise but you cannot.**

**  
**

In the fifty-first universe, Batman killed the Joker.

 

_And his dead boy, his lost boy, comes back._

_  
_

He isn’t dead, he’s alive, and grown up and out. He’s taller than Dick even, and belies even Bruce’s most careful projections. Statistics, after all, do not apply to resurrections. Lazarus will always be an outlier. (The suit, he realizes, will have to be adjusted.)

Jason’s a man with a derisive gleam in his eye and a smirk curled up on his lips, a cynic. A living, breathing cynic.

 

Bruce Wayne’s dead boy comes back, and it’s _beautiful_.

 

*

  
He whistles, impressed, when Bruce shows him the bunker. His laugh is ragged, his smile all teeth. (He never did quit smoking. Old habits die hard.)

A triumphant cackle. “I always knew you’d end up holed up in a bunker, old man. I knew it.”

 

*

  
They circle each other, figuratively and sometimes literally, trying to find the other’s weaknesses. Their soft spots. As if they didn’t know it already, it’s the same shit, different universe. Jason is deliberately obnoxious. His voice rattles the absolute quiet of the bunker. His mouth works a mile a minute, spitting out observations dressed up as insults. “It’s _ah-mazing_ , I’ve travelled through the multiverse, and all of the versions of Batman I’ve met have been total dicks.”

 

Bruce doesn’t mind. He coughs politely when Jason pauses for breath. It’s leftover from his genteel upbringing.

 

Jason is uncomfortable with silence. He adds, “You should probably take offense.”

“But none taken,” Bruce replies tranquilly. Jason gives him a sour look.

 

*

  
And as the day winds down and their first patrol is done and it’s not an unqualified success, Jason seems to expect — well, he expects a different Bruce, a different Batman, with different reactions, with different limits. He’s nonplussed when Batman kills someone - a relatively minor figure in the Gotham underworld. His mouth hangs open, but his shock soon turns to vicious joy. After all, isn’t this what he wants?

 

They’re a good team, and they find an old rhythm (which has, in fact, never existed between them) and take it from there.

 

Bruce tells him. He tries to tell him. (It’s difficult for him to speak, after all these years of silence.) But he tells Jason that it’s different now — the his death changed the game, changed the whole set-up. For good. Or bad. (His actions have alienated everyone, his family, all his friends, the Justice League, _Clark._ None can accept what he did, what he continues to do, although they reap the benefits — a perfect world — easily enough.)

 

He never took another Robin. The ragged suit in the case, isolate, perfect, is a reminder enough of his reasons.

 

He kills. He kills when he needs to. When there’s no other way. When it’s necessary. He likes to think of it as slamming shut that revolving door that was Arkham. It’s a public service, a public good. What gives him the right? Why, the people did, of course. There was no public outcry when the clown died. Nothing of the kind. Quite the opposite, in fact.

 

(Dancing on the streets was not an activity one should engage in, if those streets were in Gotham.)

 

Bruce has had a lot of time to think of his actions. To justify them perfectly, and in his own mind. But Jason just shrugs and says _yes._

Yes, they understand each other.

 

_Perfectly._

_  
_

*

 

Jason is itching to know. “Why didn’t he come back? Your Robin? ”

Bruce considers for a long time, as if he hasn’t asked the same question over and over again, since learning such things were possible. He does it mostly to make Jason wait, to make Jason twitch. “Well...” he drawls, “ I was very distraught when you -- when _he_ died - and I thought about how many times my parents’ graves had been disturbed and...”

 

Bruce gives the case a surreptitious glance. Jason’s eyes follow his, and widen.

Something clicks into place.

 

“Wait, you...”

“Cremation seemed the best option.”

“You bastard! You put me in the case!”

“Yes.”

 

And Jason is laughing, because, _of course_. Bruce was always ruthlessly logical.

 

 

*

 

The thing about Jason is that he _bitches_.

 

He bitches constantly, and Bruce realizes that this might just be a natural progression from cracking jokes while cracking heads. And he’s still at it, yammering a mile a minute, when a bullet zips past him, tearing at the right side of his neck.

 

He sinks into a sullen silence for the rest of the night.

 

When it’s time to patch up, Bruce’s bedside manner leaves much to be desired. (At those moments, he misses Alfred the most.)

Bruce presses his fingers into Jason’s flesh, feels the resistance of flesh, the insistent thud of a heartbeat, the rise and fall of his chest.

 

_Marvelous._

_  
_

*

He doesn’t like the suit, Red Robin or no.

 

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the cowl looks stupid without the pointy ears.” Jason announces. Bruce gives a little _hmm_ of disapproval. Those pointy ears have a name, as Jason should know.

 

“Some gratitude would be appreciated, Jason.” His voice is deceptively mild.

 

And Jason pins him with a sharp smile, and says, “Picked out the wrong urchin then, boss.”

 

Still, he wears it.

 

*

  
His lost boy, his dead boy, the boy he wasn’t allowed to keep, curves against his chest, his voice muffled.

”What did you say?”

“Um. Donna will need help.”

It’s too dark to see the expression on Bruce’s face, but he’s gone still. His hands are frozen, still tangled in Jason’s hair. Slowly, he says, “I thought you didn’t like that Green Lantern?”

A snort. “Rayner? He’s an asshole. But Donna...”

“Hm.”

“Don’t...” Jason’s mouth is on Bruce’s neck, a hint of teeth against skin. “think about it too hard.”

No thinking at all.

 

His lost boy. (Found.)

His dead boy. (Alive.)

 

*

Bruce doesn’t have time to think as a fist smashes into his skull, doesn’t have time to say a word. He tries to rise but he cannot. He can’t say, “I tried. I tried to make good with you. Tried to give you something. I would have given you everything.”

 

They have had a lifetime — interrupted, and not in the same universe, but still — a lifetime of not saying important things to each other. Jason will have to figure it out. 

 

 

 

And Bruce sees his dead boy again.

**Author's Note:**

> Liberally uses (and abuses) sections of _Batman: Under the Hood_ and _Countdown to the Final Crisis_. (Because, as bad as it was, I loved the idea of Jason traversing the multiverse and accidentally finding a version of Batman who loves him. That is to say, killed the Joker. Because he loved him. If only they could've gone along, and KILLED ALL THE JOKERS.) Oh well. It's best not to get too attached alternative versions of superheroes. Chapter titles and summary nicked from Margaret Atwood’s [“Flying Inside Your Own Body”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltv12pfUQ01qa9g0zo1_500.png).


End file.
